Fawwaz, delighted, fired off the rest of his clip into empty air to show his exultation.
"Everybody okay?" Carter asked.
No one was hurt, apart from a few minor scratches and bruises sustained by Sultana and Faranyah. The rear window was gone. A line of fat black holes dimpled the car's rear. The right side of the windshield was starred by a spidery impact web.
Prince Hasan breathed a heartfelt "Allah be praised!" at their narrow escape.
That did it for the opposition. The Red Wing reached Al Khobaiq without further incident.
The emir's crack units of Bedouin Home Guard were mobilized on full alert. Security was intense at secret police headquarters, where Prince Hasan rolled the Red Wing to a halt.
Those bullet holes perforating the trunk didn't look good for Karl Kurt Hodler. The lock was jammed and a burly guardsman had to jimmy the trunk lid open with a crowbar.
Hodler was curled up in a fetal position, steeped in a pool of his bright red blood. He was later found to have taken three slugs, any one of which would have killed him.
Sultana, hugging herself, asked, "Is he dead?"
"Incredibly dead," Carter said.
Karl Kurt Hodler had had the last laugh after all. He had cheated both AXE and the headsman's axe. A tough break, but Carter didn't seem as upset by it as the prince would have expected.
After a hurried consultation with an excited aide, Hasan was grim-faced. "More bad news. Road Post Fifty-eight was massacred, wiped out to the last man. That includes Wooten, whom I left there for safekeeping. He was gunned down in his cell."
The prince was sour. "What a waste! All that work, and we've lost both our leads, Wooten and Hodler. We'll have to start all over again, and — but you are smiling, my friend. What can you possibly find amusing about this setback?"
"We've got a source that's better than Wooten, and the next best thing to Hodler," Carter said.
"Who?"
"Sultana. The Crescent Club provided Hodler with a perfect cover. He used it to meet with leading subversive elements in AI Khobaiq. Pretending to be nothing more than pleasure seekers, the radicals met in the back rooms of the club to plot revolution with Hodler."
"Hodler is dead, Nick."
"Sultana is very much alive. Hodler was insanely jealous and possessive."
"I can see why," Hasan said, eyeing Sultana.
"He never let her out of his sight," Carter said. "Kept her with him at all times when he was at the club, even when he was busy plotting with his radical pals. Sultana knows them all, and will identify them. Once you put the arm on them, I'm betting it won't be long before one of them tips us to Reguiba's hideout."
"I see." Hasan nodded, smiling. As the implications sank in, his smile broadened. As the full effect of Sultana's curves hit him, he was all but beaming. "That's good. Very good!"
Carter grinned back. "I got some of the story from her last night, but Pm sure you'd like to talk to her yourself."
"Indeed I would! You will excuse me, please!"
Prince Hasan made a beeline for Sultana, and in no time, their two heads were together. Carter overheard Sultana asking him, "Tell me, are you really a prince?"
"Am I a prince? But of course! Emir Bandar is my father's brother! The emir regularly consults with me on security matters!"
Hasan took her arm. "But this is no place for a beauty like you, out here in the dust and the sun! Let's find a more congenial spot. We can drink mint tea and get to know one another better."
"That would be nice," Sultana said.
Off they went. Carter knew that Sultana was in good hands. Or was it the prince who was in good hands?
Catching the Killmaster's eye, Faranyah flashed him a nod, a wink, and a smile. Then she hurried off after her mistress.
Thirteen
Carter had Reguiba right where he wanted him, dead center in the cross hairs of his scoped target rifle. This was more of a firing squad than a military operation.
The Killmaster was not alone. With him were fifty members of the emir's Green Legion, the elite of the Bedouin Home Guard. Every member of this crack commando outfit was equipped with a rifle like Carter's, and qualified as a marksman.
They were the spearhead, the advance guard of this night attack. Nearby, waiting in the wings just out of sight, six companies of Home Guard infantry gathered, their firepower multiplied by machine gun-bearing jeeps and armored personnel carriers.
This was the cleanup.
Carter was right when he said that it wouldn't take long to get a line on Reguiba's whereabouts. Sultana arrived at secret police headquarters at midmorning. By noon, special squads prowled Al Khobaiq, collaring the conspirators she had named. It didn't take much squeezing to extract information from the plotters, not in a land where red-hot irons and the rack were standard police procedure. By early afternoon, the suspects were falling over themselves in their eagerness to confess everything they knew.
Emir Bandar was reportedly shocked at the extent of the conspiracy, which had enmeshed some of the city's leading families. He shouldn't have been. His royal family, the Jalubi, was a hereditary aristocracy maintaining a stranglehold on all the emirate's power centers. Many of the plotters were motivated not by revolutionary fervor, but by a desire to get a piece of the action.
But that was no concern of the Killmaster. Seen in the feudal context of Arabian politics, the emir was no better and no worse than the absolute monarchs of a dozen other kingdoms. Carter wasn't there to start a reform movement.
No matter what his faults were, the emir couldn't be as bad as what Reguiba had planned for Al Khobaiq.
The Zubeir Depression was a shallow bowl stretching some twenty miles. Under it lay one of the most extensive oil deposits in the world. Once the dome had been tapped and the wells came in, Al Khobaiq was awash in a sea of oil and money.
Acres of ground sprouted a forest of derricks. The area designated Field 89 was the scene of furtive, frantic activity as the Khobaiqi component of Operation Ifrit swung into high gear. Epicenter of the disturbance was a fenced-in compound as wide as a football field.
Dominating the space was an equipment shed as big as a dirigible hangar. Here was a motor pool and storehouse holding trucks, earth-moving machines, pipe-laying rigs, cranes, forklifts, and the like. It also held a fortune in smuggled weapons and explosives, which were now being passed along as quickly as possible to organizers of the insurrection.
The gigantic scale of the layout dwarfed the antlike streams of handlers and loaders moving the ornaments. A steady flow of diesel trucks entered the compound, pulling up to loading docks, stuffing themselves with weaponry. The materiel was earmarked for militant cells of Shiite revolutionaries among the rank and file oil workers.
The imposition of martial law in Al Khobaiq had caused the delivery timetable to be speeded up, but not fast enough. Time had run out. Zero hour was nigh.
The Home Guard was ready to crush the militants. They were prepared to sustain the loss of Field 89 in order to keep all the other fields. They clustered beyond the zone of light, ringing the compound, ready to move in hard the moment the signal was given. That moment was designated as zero hour.
But Emir Bandar was particularly concerned that the ringleaders be exterminated. To that end, a special squad of the Green Legion was sent into action, to infiltrate and to execute.
Carter was along for the party. As one of the few men alive who could identify Reguiba, his presence was vital. Plus, he would have hated to sit this one out. Reguiba's troops had done plenty of shooting at him, and it would be a positive pleasure to return the favor.